Topics - Curious Squirrel

Found it somewhat interesting to see this pop up in my feed from The Daily Show.

It's a 'Back in Black' segment, so obviously it isn't particularly flattering for FE, but what they do say about the actual FEH is at least correct for some (mainstream?) models. Although I can't say I've ever heard of the 'FE starlet' they reference. But I don't spend much time on YouTube. 'All publicity is good publicity' I guess for this? It really doesn't do much more than call FE'ers stupid, which has been done plenty before. But this is certainly one of the more mainstream and popular locations to ever do a segment on it.

Of note, since the focus is on the Denver gathering, TFES gets no mention at all. Not even a title card anywhere that I noticed.

The Coriolis Effect, however, is a fictitious effect that is not, and has never been, demonstrated with experimental evidence. Its proponents are unable to show that this effect has ever been detected or that it is truly necessary to account for in various operations. The evidence for this effect appears to be based entirely on 'common knowledge', on how things 'should be', and by authors who make 'predictions'; but all articles and documents presented in favor of the "Coriolis Effect" are without reference to, or demonstration of, the critical and necessary experimental evidence to directly prove the matter.

Within that page you will find a number of links to experiments that verified the effect, as well as a nice guided tour through the history of studying it. It includes some information as well on the Eötvös effect and G. Coriolis' original paper on the matter.

Am I going to read a 778 page book because you asked? No. This is a debate. Not homework. You tell me which bits are relevant and I will read those. This is like you starting a thread on the existence of God and me insisting you read the bible first.

With the sort of re-branding of the FE upper Fora, is there any chance we could make this into a slightly more formal or standing rule? If someone posts a longer video or a source with large amounts of text, it would be of great help to debating to actually cite what in their source is actually relevant. Just posting a 30 min video might be ok as a starting post, but it doesn't seem helpful or useful as a response post without at least giving timestamps or page numbers to what's relevant to the present discussion.

I'm curious what people are aware of for experiments or tests that will differ depending on belief of RE or FE. FE needs to be falsifiable after all. Here's the ones I can come up with in my time, along with what I've seen discussed in regards to them so far. I would love it if FE believers would be up for giving any more, or correcting my 'conclusions' on the ones posted here.

1) 'Sinking ship'a) FE posits that a ship whose hull has 'vanished' from sight, can be restored by the use of optical magnification. Videos have been posted purporting to show this effect, largely argued to be inconclusive evidence from RE proponents.b) RE posits that a ships hull vanishes from sight by going over the curve and cannot be restored using magnification. Videos have been posted purporting to show this effect, largely argued to be inconclusive for similar reasons.Conclusion: None. Neither sides evidence has been conclusive enough for the other.

2) Lasers/spotting over distancea) FE posits that a laser shone from a level position across a surface (such as a lake) will arrive at the other side at the same height that it left. Youtube is littered with these videos, but RE mostly regards them with skepticism both for the general lack of experimental rigor, and the unknowns of firing a laser over water.b) RE posits a certain amount of drop should occur depending on the distance the laser is fired. One video in particular has been offered up, the laser part of the experiment undergoing intense scrutiny. Unfortunately exactly matching up with mathematical drop calculations has left it in a problematic state for being able to reject the FE videos as well.Conclusion: None. Neither sides evidence is particularly conclusive, and b leads to problems in dismissing a.

3) Horizon to eye levela) FE posits that the horizon will always rise to eye level. There have been few images/videos shown in reference to this, the largest proof for it residing within EnaG. RE proponents generally regard the statement with skepticism and request photo's showing the effect with detailed information about how it was done.b) RE posits the horizon should 'dip' lower and lower beneath 'level' as one goes higher. Currently a thread is underway working to create current images to prove this. FE proponents have been largely silent here recently, but expressed concerns over the setup of the experiment near the start. One FE experiment suggestion was met with skepticism by RE crowd.Conclusion: Unknown at present. Information is still being gathered and is yet to be fully presented. As well, FE proponents have yet to set forth a structured set of what they would accept as proof.

4) Add your own

There should likely be more, but these are what I can come up with for relatively easy/cheaply testable differences. Do note, there are a number of things that, while the mechanisms are different, the final observations are stated to be the same regardless of flat or round. Including but not limited to: Sunset/rise, appearance/disappearance of pole star(s), separate constellations, movement of the stars, and angle of the sun.

I invite FE or RE to correct if I've presented something wrong, or if they have more differences to offer. The best differences would be those that can be tested relatively cheaply or easily by one person, ideally both.

This has been bugging me for a while. I'm just not seeing how the case for a flat Earth is any stronger than that of a round Earth. Both appear to rely almost completely upon the work of other people, or questionable experiments. Just what is the actual case for a FE?

"It looks flat"I see this a fair bit, although it appears to be both the weakest plea and a fall back for some. Not only is this highly subjective (I look out my window and it appears anything but flat; welcome to hill country) but the given math for a round Earth means simply looking flat doesn't rule that out. It comes down to a sort of 'debate' between which one feels is simpler. A sphere, or a flat surface. While a sphere might be mathematically simpler, our daily lives seem to suggest flat is simpler at times. Either way, this doesn't seem all that universally compelling.

"ENaG/Bedford Level"Here is where I'm personally starting to run into some problems. Not only was this experiment at a time before images could really be done to properly capture everything, but the location has produced a fairly wide array of results from different people, including one using it to conclude the Earth is concave! But really, why should we trust ENaG any more than any other literature? Has any member of the Society actually recreated the experiments described herein? If you have not, how can you trust them? Why are these experiments trusted more than others? It seems these should be treated with the same amount of caution and skepticism as any other set of experiments, but they don't seem to be.

"The Bishop Experiment"This is an interesting one. I've come across a fair number of threads about this one as I've been back browsing, and there are a disturbing number of things not quite holding up to close scrutiny. Pictures have been shown, but many don't match what has been pointed out, and there's the issue of a much closer beach visible from the same location. This also unfortunately suffers from the problems pervasive to a number of similar experiments, in that the air over water is in a near constant state of flux, and cannot truly be measured for a proper control. An issue for much of ENaG as well. This one seems like it could be a useful tool, but it seems to need better documentation.

"Zetetic Cosmogony"Been reading some of this recently, as it too is listed under 'experimental evidence' on the Wiki here. I haven't seen much in the way of experiments in this book at present, merely quoting the words of others. Which once again raises the question of why we should believe both their words, and the conclusions being drawn about them. If there's something more tangible in here, I would be appreciative if someone could point me to it. But I see much of the same statements as ENaG makes mirrored, nearly all without even an apparent attempt to document showing them, unlike ENaG.

"Lady Blount"Here is stated to be a close repeat of the 'Bedford Level' experiment. The wiki calls this 'one of the first to peer review' that bit of work. The description provided however seems wholly unsatisfactory. We are told about a sheet seen from one end of the canal at the other. That the sheet is even seen reflecting in the water. But we don't know the height of the sheet, nor do we know how much was seen. The claim is that there was a picture taken, but this is not provided on the wiki. This appears to be it, but it too isn't particularly satisfactory. Once again we are left with trusting the words of another.

Based on all of this, I have to ask one small question. What makes any of these 'better' than the sources for a globe Earth? Every one is at best a written personal account with no useful visual evidence. Even The Bishop Experiment has issues with both it's documentation, and evidence. Simply trusting these sources seems the same as trusting the sources which describe the Earth as round. Am I missing something? The zetetic approach here, to me, would say that one cannot be sure of the shape of the Earth. That's obviously not a very compelling conclusion, and if I have missed something or you feel I'm misrepresenting something I would encourage leading me in the correct direction. I've attempted to be as neutral as possible in my observations and statements here, but I'm only human.

Here's an image from a facility built to precise specifications. Can you guess what they are? No reverse image searching. That's cheating here. If you know exactly what it is, I encourage you to hold on answering until the poll is over. Well you can select a poll answer, but don't go ruining the suspense for others.

All starting numbers for this calculation will be pulled directly from the FES wiki. If there is an issue with any of them, take it up with the editor of the wiki.

On the equinox, the sun is directly 90° above a point on the equator. At 45° latitude N and at 45° latitude S along the same line of longitude, the sun is seen as being at 45° up from the horizontal. The distance between the equator and these two points is about 3000 miles. Thus, the sun is 3000 miles in the air. Right? Well, let's see what happens when we shift around some, shall we? The sun should show up at that distance no matter where we look from, right?

Let's cut our distance in half, going from 3000 miles away and a 45° angle, to 1500 miles away, and a 67.5° angle. This gives us a sun height of... 3621 miles. Oh. Well that's quite a bit different isn't it? Well how about if we go the other direction. Halfway from 45° to 0°, giving us an angle of 22.5° and a distance of 4500 miles. This gives us a sun height of.... 1864 miles. Oh dear, that's even more out of whack than our first one. Well what about if we just go out to the poles. That's about 6000 miles, but to make sure the angle is above 0 like it is there, we'll go to just 5900 miles and see what the angle is there. This should give us an angle well under 10° at most. So with a 3000 mile high sun we get an angle of... 27°

Welp, I see three options here. 1) There's something making the light from the sun bend to get the correct angles all across the globe. It's consistent in all types of weather, all across the Earth, every day of the year. The only thing I can think of for this, is magic. Nothing else makes sense. 2) The Earth isn't flat. You can't have a sun that is simultaneously 3621 miles up AND 1864 miles up AND 3000 miles up. That's not possible. Therefore the idea of Earth being flat with a close sun, cannot work. 3) We have incorrect measurements somewhere. I started with numbers in the wiki though, and every other number simply follows what holds to be true mathematically. So either the wiki is wrong, or we're back to one of the other two options. Actually even if the wiki is wrong, that would leave us at one of the other options being true still.

So FEers. What's it gonna be? You can't have light traveling in a straight line AND a flat Earth.

We have research stations in Antarctica. Just like there are some in the Arctic. How does the FE model explain their summer being continuous daylight, just like what happens in the Arctic region? The models for a flat Earth I've seen has Antarctica as a ring around the Earth, which wouldn't allow this to happen based on the movement of the sun. So how is this accounted for under FET?

Been starting to read some things and it finally struck me what was bugging me with this one. Where's the right angle? If the Earth is a sphere, walking any distance away from a starting point would leave you no longer at the same level as where you started, thus no longer at a right angle to your starting point. Right? What am I missing here?